


the ripe promise of drier land

by rivkat



Series: Crossing the Bridge [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Eight crazy nights, M/M, The Devil Made Them Do It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 00:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Afterwards, Sam and Dean feel compelled to talk about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ripe promise of drier land

**Author's Note:**

  * For [on_verra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_verra/gifts).



Someone had to explain to Bobby that they’d added a lap to the apocalypse countdown. Sam let Dean do it, which in retrospect might’ve been a mistake. Dean started out with “We figured out how to keep him out of our hair for a year,” which didn’t get far, and quickly degenerated to “No, it wasn’t a deal. Not a deal deal—Okay, look, Bobby, it was—” Dean’s panicked eyes met Sam’s for a second before dancing away. “It was a sex thing, okay? Sam did a sex thing for Lucifer and it bought us a year.”

Bobby’s shock and disgust apparently outweighed his need for further details, or anyway Dean hung up and Bobby didn’t call back.

Dean let out an appalled/relieved breath and rubbed his temple. “Okay,” he said. “Now we use that time to figure out how to gank Lucifer’s sorry ass.”

They were still in this nice hotel room that smelled like them: showered and shaved and sitting on separate beds, but he could remember how Dean’s skin had felt pressed against his own, and Sam couldn’t switch gears that quickly. He was used to Dean’s judgment, or so he told himself. But this was a new level of fucked-up. “Do you think I’m—?”

Dean stared at him, then visibly lost patience. “In danger of losing your girlish figure? No, Sam, I—”

“A whore,” Sam said, heavily. “That’s what you call someone who has sex to get something valuable, right?”

Dean’s face went through several configurations of anger and distress. “Fuck no, Sam! You—he didn’t give you a choice. I’m the—” He looked away, swallowed. “I’m the guy who fucked his baby brother and got off on it,” he finished, like he was confessing to being a willing torturer.

“Wow,” Sam said before he could think better of it. “That takes ‘do as I say, not as I do’ to a whole new level.”

Dean blinked.

“Do you think I was lying? Last night, when I said—”

“I heard you the first ten times,” Dean said, in his best ‘I hate the existence of language because it enables this conversation’ voice, the one that meant that he actually needed to talk and needed Sam to pretend that Sam was the one forcing the issue. 

“I love you, Dean. We went there together. And I’m not sorry about any part of it. That’s pretty much the only choice I’ve made that I can say that about.”

Dean’s eyes were glossy. “You should never have had to do it.” No question but that he was talking about how he’d broken the first seal and then repudiated Sam right when Sam was ready to kill Lilith, like Sam was only ever knocking down dominoes from a line Dean had set in motion. Sam was going to lose him to his own guilt, but Sam didn’t know—had never known—how to talk to him in a way that didn’t hurt. Sometimes managing Dean was the hardest part of this whole clusterfuck, Sam thought.

There was one method of communication Dean did understand, though.

Sam moved from the bed he was sitting on, the one that they hadn’t fucked on, to the one where Dean was. He sat, shoulder to shoulder, Dean’s warmth soothing him even as Dean’s indrawn breath warned of an impending fist to his face. 

“Hey,” he said, and shifted so that he could cup Dean’s jaw in his hand. Dean was staring resolutely at his own lap, hunt-roughened fingers clenched on his thighs. Slowly, slowly, Dean let his face be turned. His unshaven skin was prickly against Sam’s palm. His eyes were the green of a drowning ocean. “I need you to be strong enough to stay with me,” he told Dean. “I can do this. But I need you behind me, man.”

By the dirty joke that flickered in Dean’s eyes for a second before Dean shut his mouth on it, Sam knew that he still had a chance. He leaned forward until their foreheads touched. Dean was panting, and Sam felt it in the tripling beat of his own heart. “Sammy …” he breathed, fear-sour and familiar.

Sam desperately wanted to close the last distance between them. You said there was nothing you wouldn’t do for me, he wanted to remind Dean. But he needed Dean to choose, just as he’d needed Dean to speak the words last night. He did let his hand fall to Dean’s shoulder, the other at Dean’s waist, waiting. Hoping.

When Dean kissed him, when Dean pushed him down flat on the bed, Sam did him the kindness of keeping his eyes closed, even when Dean’s tears dripped hot onto Sam’s cheeks. Sam wrapped his arms around Dean and held on. Dean was never going to be okay with this, and he wasn’t wrong. But whether the world ended in a year or not, Sam was done walking away. Lucifer’s mistake had been getting his siblings tangled up in his war with his father. Sam knew better now. Maybe he was Dean’s cross to bear; maybe Dean was his. Either way, whatever nails got driven through the both of them, they were together. 

For now, it was enough.


End file.
